Why shouldn't she? Don't expect anything from the Greens, the Labor Party or the Independents.You are supposed to be thinking that way about her. Channel 7 set her up and when she lost it they gleefully filmed her. The major parties have done everything to discredit Pauline because she would'nt toe the party line. The Labor Party even jailed her on trumped up charges and then had to release her - but no compensation.I say leave her alone. A lesser woman would have committed suicide after all the "mates" put her through. She is the most courageous woman in politics - and I am not alone in thinking that. Good luck to her!

BRISBANE -- Pauline Hanson, the most colourful and controversial politician Australia has seen in a generation, is back on the hustings.

As Australians grapple with the global financial crisis, the flame-haired former fish-and-chip shop owner is hoping the times will suit her right-wing views.

Hanson has launched her eighth campaign in 13 years to contest the March 21 election in the northern state of Queensland, the incubator of her One Nation party.

To characterize Pauline Hanson to the uninitiated is difficult. But if you were to combine France's Jean-Marie Le Pen and America's Barry Goldwater, throw in a Grade 10 education and the oratory skills of your maiden aunt, you may have a starting point.

She projects an unsettling, flashing-green-eyed sex appeal, literally wraps herself in the flag, fears Australia will be "swamped by Asians" and yet famously asked an interviewer to explain the word xenophobic.

A tough-on-crime advocate who emerged from a stint in jail preaching prison reform, Hanson berates "elitist" presumption in screeching "Australianese."

She defies predictions, breaks rules and never, ever, apologizes.

As the full force of the financial crisis descends on the resource-laden state, Labour's previously safe tenure can no longer be taken for granted.

Jobs in the mining sector are disappearing, real estate prices are plummeting and even the well-heeled citizens of Queensland's capital Brisbane are looking nervous.

Hanson, running in a semi-rural seat just outside Brisbane, is plowing the most fertile ground she's come across since she first appeared on the national radar as a disgruntled Liberal candidate in the 1996 federal election.

That year Hanson's name appeared in Brisbane's The Courier Mail after being disciplined for an "attack" on Australian Aborigines.

Hanson had declared she felt no responsibility for Australia's historical treatment of Aborigines, largely because she wasn't there.

Referring to the then-alarming number of Aborigine deaths in police holding cells, she added: "Pity that as much media coverage or political grandstanding is not shown for white deaths in custody."

Such blunt attacks on the "aboriginal industry" were unheard of. Hanson's party boss disciplined her, and she agreed to rein in the rhetoric.

When Hanson repeated her comments a few days later, the Liberal party tossed her but she went on to win a seat as an Independent by a crushing margin, stunning the nation.

In mining camp, factory lunch rooms and sugar-cane paddocks, working Australians having their smoko (meal break) suddenly were talking politics.

"She's just sayin' what everyone thinks but's too scared to say," was the common refrain.

"I and most Australians want our immigration policy radically reviewed and that of multiculturalism abolished," she declared in her maiden speech in Parliament, her shaking voice betraying the enormous pressure she was under.

"I believe we are in danger of being swamped by Asians... they have their own culture and religion, form ghettos and do not assimilate.

"Of course, I will be called racist."

And she was, repeatedly, but her arrival highlighted a larger internal schism few were prepared to confront -- the divide between the "elites" and "ordinary" Australians -- between urban, educated, political sophisticates and plain-speaking workers.

When Hanson went on to form the One Nation Party and stormed into Queensland Parliament with 25 per cent of the vote and 11 of the available 89 seats in 1998, the divide widened.

The loathing Hanson and her supporters had for the elites found its most potent expression in a hatred of the media, which was emblematic among "Hansonites" as self-indulgent, latte-sipping "wankers" who possessed no practical skills and whose habitat was the inner suburbs of Canberra.

One Nation took little more than two years to implode but exposed many national currents, including a shift in the nation's economic power from the simple world of agriculture to the globalized world of information technology.

Hanson still evokes memories of simpler times, echoed by her policies -- capital punishment, a flat tax, a return to tariff protection, "Australia for Australians" and an end to all fancy talk.

When journalist Tracey Curro during a TV interview asked if she was xenophobic she replied: "Please explain?" -- a phrase now entrenched in the Australian lexicon to parody any state of confusion.

She made a video to be aired in the event of her assassination which prompted national hilarity:"Fellow Australians, if you are seeing me now, it means I have been murdered. Do not let my passing distract you for even a moment."

In August 2003 a jury convicted Hanson and one of her advisers of electoral fraud. She languished in a prison, befriending convicted murderers, until released on appeal a few months later.

The "lock-'em-up-and-throw-away-the-key" advocate emerged pondering the role of incarceration in the criminal justice system.

Australia and Queensland once again face deep uncertainty. The flame-haired populist with her fish-and-chip-shop philosophies may find herself harnessing that uncertainty by once again echoing the fears and anxieties of "the forgotten people."

Michael Madigan is the Winnipeg Free Press correspondent in Australia. He writes about politics for the Courier Mail.

About Me

For over 6 years, the 4350water blog has informed readers of plans by the Toowoomba City Council (now Toowoomba Regional Council) and the Qld government to introduce recycled water for drinking in Toowoomba.
It has also looked at the issue from a State and Federal perspective and dealt with related State and Federal political issues.
There continues to be a need for the Toowoomba Regional Council to be completely transparent in its dealings with the ratepayers and residents of Toowoomba.
There also continues to be a need for open debate on the benefits and risks of potable reuse and long-term studies on the effects on humans of drinking recycled water.
Coal seam gas water is emerging as a possible alternate water source for some uses for the region.
The 4350water blog is a collective effort and thanks go to its many contributors.